Sentimental Value is Joachim Trier’s follow-up to The Worst Person in the World, and explores similar themes to the beloved 2022 drama. This time, Trier shifts his focus onto familiar love as it explores a relationship between a disappointing father and his two angry daughters. The emotional reaction to this film will depend on the audience’s own history with their family and their personal hangups.

Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård) is a famous arthouse film director who wants to reconnect with his daughters, Nora (Renate Rinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), after the death of their mother. Sentimental Value frames the Berg family home as the central protagonist of the story. In this Oslo home, there has been joy and there has been pain over its generations. Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt manage to anthropomorphize the house and connect the cracks and its replastered exterior to the lives of its inhabitants. On paper, it’s a cringeworthy bookend to the film, but in reality, it’s underplayed enough to move.

Nora followed her father’s footsteps in the film industry, becoming an actress. When we first meet her, she is suffering from severe stage fright. The ensemble and crew chase her around backstage, doing all they can to get her on that stage and in front of the waiting crowd. She purposely keeps her private life messy, sleeping with her married co-star (Anders Danielsen Lie), so she doesn’t have to engage in emotional intimacy. She’s stubborn and flighty, and more like her father than she would ever want to admit.

Nora’s life contrasts with her historian sister Agnes, who has a stable home and an adorable 9-year-old son. The mild-tempered and forgiving Agnes has more sympathy for her father despite having less in common with him. Agnes has dabbled in Hollywood, appeared in her father’s movie as a young child, but has since turned her back on the industry. Maybe staying away from Hollywood is the trick to happiness?

Two Separate Yet Parallel Stories About An Estranged Family

The film is essentially two stories in one. One about a father dealing with generational trauma through filmmaking, and the other about the bond between two sisters formed as children of divorce. Which strand works better will depend on the life experience you bring to the film-watching experience.

Gustav throws himself back into his daughters’ lives after their mother passes away. He isn’t in town to offer his condolences; he has a work proposition for Nora. He has written his first film in 15 years and wants Nora to play the lead. She immediately turns him down, not even bothering to read the script. Her not wanting to work with him almost hurts more than their estrangement.

While he can’t impress his daughters with his iconic status in the industry, he can still woo young actresses. During a trip to the Deauville American Film Festival, he convinces ingenue Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) to sign on to play the stand-in for his daughter. Initially, she is excited to appear in a more grown-up project instead of glorified perfume ads, but soon becomes uneasy at how much reality and fiction are blurred.

His script isn’t just about his role as a disappointing father; it also addresses Gustav’s relationship with his own mother. Gustav starts to show more paternal instinct towards the young actress than he does towards his own daughters. For a second, the film hints that something more may happen between the pair, but that’s less about the writing and more about the audience’s perception of a boss/young employee dynamic.

Gustav and his daughters live in two separate but parallel stories. Initially, it feels like a loss not to see how Gustav and his daughters interact. But Trier is smart and realizes that the way siblings interact can say more about the parental relationships they grew up around than seeing a father and daughter together.

 While Nora predominantly took care of Agnes when they were young, the roles seem to reverse in adulthood. Their relationship is what makes Sentimental Value a special film. It’s less showy than Gustav’s journey to reconciling with his children, but much more powerful. A scene where the two girls reminisce about their childhood might be the most powerful moment of Trier’s entire filmography.

The Power Of Filmmaking Can Only Do So Much

While Sentimental Value is a film about the power of filmmaking and how it can offer its own type of group therapy, it’s not naïve to the industry. Gustav is an unpleasant human whose artistic talent doesn’t take away his numerous egocentricities and megalomania. The film also strips away some of the pretentious director tropes, forcing cinema aficionados to recognize that their favourite filmmaker is probably a terrible person and a horrible father.

Stellan Skarsgård delivers the performance of his career as an ashamed yet arrogant father who is trying to process his emotions through cinema. The actor has been putting in subtle, affecting performances for years, but Trier understands how to use his warmth, so it reaches its peak potential. Skarsgård adds empathy to a character who would have been downright unlikable in the hands of another actor.

While Skarsgård gets the showy work, Renate Rinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas bring depth to Sentimental Value. Both actors deliver human performances that feel uncomfortably real in their naturalism. In comparison, Elle Fanning is slightly out of depth as the young American actress, playing an undeveloped role as a canvas for the ideas of others. It’s less an issue with Fanning as an actor and more about how she is written, as an American trying to mask herself as a native Scandi. Her bubblegum celebrity just doesn’t fit in with this crowd.

Sentimental Value is a film with multiple layers, perhaps too many layers. It dips and dives through different themes, at one point seeming like it’s going into Bergman’s Persona. Yet, through all the symbolism, this is a movie about generational trauma and how your children inherit your own fears.

Sentimental Value uses filmmaking as a tool to repair families, but it puts up a wall between the characters and the audience. The final act rushes its emotional payoff, and it’s perhaps undeserved. Characters start changing their minds in the last act and rush towards a conclusion that doesn’t feel natural. The big crescendo doesn’t quite give the release the build-up requires, nor the emotional payoff the characters need. The film suffers from talking about feelings more than showing how the characters feel.

Compared to The Worst Person In The World, Sentimental Value lacks some emotional depth. This is partly due to Gustav’s emotional constipation and partly because the film uses art to create a wall between its characters and its audience. Sentimental Value will always make you feel like you’re an outsider looking in at the turmoil of a dysfunctional family.

For more Reviews, make sure to check back to That Hashtag Show.

Keep Reading:

‘Jay Kelly’: George Clooney Schmoozes Hollywood In Sentimental Dramedy [Review]